I applied online and heard from a recruiter within a few days looking to set up time for a phone interview. The recruiter who interviewed me seemed rather distracted and inattentive to our conversation. She also seemed to be reading off a script of questions rather than engaging with what I had to say. For example, in describing a previous internship experience I made it a point to discuss the heavy use of Excel and her next question was "Do you have any experience with Excel? How comfortable do you feel with the program?" I hung up feeling like the process wasn't going anywhere. I was surprised to hear from the recruiter again a few days later asking me to complete an Excel exercise as the next step in the interview process. I spent several hours digging through the spreadsheet to distill insights/recommendations from all the data. I sent it back to the recruiter only never to hear back from her or anyone else again. I made several attempts to reach out and check on the status of my application but never received any response. The whole thing felt really unprofessional.

I originally found the posting for the program through my college and sent my resume and cover letter to the HR representative listed there. I received an email two days later asking to set up a time for a phone screening and then talked with the same HR representative on the phone two days later. The phone call lasted around 10-15 min and consisted of questions like "what social media sites do you frequent", "what would you say has been your proudest accomplishment", "would you consider yourself an expert in excel", "what changes do you think could be made to our site" etc. I was then asked to come in for a face-to-face interview the following week and was sent information by email detailing the interviews which explained it would last about 3 hours, I should bring in a portfolio showcasing my quantitative skill set and possibly prepare a presentation to describe what changes I would make to the site and how I would measure its success. I met with 5 different people, each for about 30 min and was asked different types of questions. I was never asked about a porfolio and no presentation was needed. The whole process only took about 2.5 hours, as one of the people I was supposed to meet with was out of town, and was told I should hear back from them by the end of the week. They never got back to me. I followed up with two emails and a voicemail over the next week and a half, and then was finally notified two weeks after the interview by email that they had decided to move on with another candidate. I think they may have been looking for someone with more website experience, but I'm not sure. Overall I found it to be a good experience and liked the office and people I met with, but the unprofessionalism after the interview and the pretentious vibe (which is saying something, coming from an ivy leaguer!) I got from some of the people made me fully question whether or not this was an environment worth working in. Other than that, it seemed to be a fun office with nice perks.